Items Not Available In Local Store

Question

I've shopped at Best Buy for years. Over the past 4-5 years I've become less and less pleased with your stores and have been pretty much forced to shop elsewhere. Currently I shop at the Findlay, Ohio store as it's the nearest Best Buy to me. The second nearest store is an hour drive one way. Not practical, so if Findlay doesn't have what I want then I don't get it from Best Buy. Aside from the completely rude, arrogant, and unprofessional management in the Findlay store (which I've addressed with Best Buy elsewhere) I'm also finding a smaller and smaller selection of the items I shop there for and less and less of a reason to waste my time driving the 20-25 minutes to your store.
I don't have many choices for music shopping in my area. Mostly K-Mart and Wal-Mart. The nearest honest to God music store is about a half hour away and there's really not anyplace else near that store that I frequent so that becomes a special trip for music shopping alone. On the other hand your Findlay store is near several other places I frequent so I'm more inclined to go there first before making a special trip. Unfortunately this is very close to coming to an end.
On July 25th I was in your Findlay store looking for the new Symphony X cd "Underworld" which had just been released the previous day. After asking a clerk I was told there was not a single copy in the store, but I was also told they would have it "next week". Next week came and went. No "Underworld" in stock in Findlay as I was told it would be. This is week two. Still no "Underworld" in stock in Findlay.
Now I understand you can't possibly carry every new release, but this isn't some obscure niche release. Symphony X is one of the most recognized bands in the metal scene today. They are signed and distributed by the largest metal label in the world, Nuclear Blast Records. Also, on Amazon "Underworld" was the NUMBER ONE BEST SELLER in Hard Rock/Metal on PRE ORDERS ALONE. Now, two weeks later it is still NUMBER THREE, displaced only by two discs that were just released yesterday. Yet for some reason you don't see fit to put it in your stores so YOUR customers can buy it.
Even more puzzling is the fact that I used to pick up Nuclear Blast discs at Best Buy on a regular basis. Looking at the selection in your Findlay store lately I'd think Nuclear Blast has gone out of business and stopped producing cds. To the contrary, they've been signing even more bands to their label, most notably Slayer - one of the "Big 4" of metal, the 4 bands widely considered by metal fans to be the largest in history. So with this lack of Nuclear Blast releases in your store, should I expect to not find in your store one of the most anticipated releases of the year in Slayer's forthcoming September release "Repentless"?
What I've actually been seeing in your stores in terms of metal are releases from the "major" labels such as WEA and Sony/BMG. When there was once a day I would go to your stores and not be disappointed in the selection you offered I now find myself walking out shaking my head because you've become nothing more than an overpriced Wal Mart in terms of your music selection. The only thing I see you having over Wal Mart at this point is you at least sell uncensored albums with the parental advisory labels on them instead of treating your customers like children who can't decide for themselves. Unfortunately that's just not enough.
To add insult to this here's an article from Forbes that is just one year old this month: (removed per forum guidelines) Guess what guys? What I just described to you with the Symphony X cd is EXACTLY why your customers are going online. I went to your store. I wanted to give you my money. I told your clerks exactly what I was looking for. As usual, the customer is ignored. Not only ignored, but lied to. Apparently your stores run on a different calendar than the rest of the world because I'm still waiting for "Underworld" to arrive in your Findlay store "next week" as I was told on July 25th it would. And let me be perfectly clear, this is not the first time I've been lied to in a Best Buy store, and not even the first time I've been lied to in your Findlay store.
So after all this has been said, what I'd really like to know is, what exactly does Best Buy plan to do to keep customers shopping in their stores? What does Best Buy plan to do to set themselves apart from the pack? The sad thing is, Best Buy USED to do exactly what they needed to do to keep my business - offer a deep and unique selection that wasn't available anyplace else locally. Now you're just as generic as my local Wal Mart at a higher price. So I guess my only option to buy "Underworld" is to - you guessed it - shop online for it. Amazon must love Best Buy right now for driving even more business their way.

Answer 1

Really? Wow! Your response proves that you didn't even bother to read what the problem is. 1. CDs are a dying medium? They aren't dead yet and I'd rather pay ONCE to get the music I want on a CD than to have to continue paying every month for continuing access to the same music. $10 ONCE and the new Symphony X is mine to listen to anytime/anywhere I want FOR LIFE or $10/A MONTH and I also have to have an internet connection available whenever/wherever I want to listen to it. And did I mention uncompressed lossless audio on the CD as opposed to highly compressed lossy audio on a stream? Hmmmm.... 2. Obviously not understanding the difference between "in store" and "BestBuy.com". Using your logic, the new Symphony X DOES show up on BestBuy.com, Best Buy IS carrying it, so when I went into the store it should have been there. 3. You admit yourself you could see how many were coming on your next truck. I was told "It will be here next week". You say "All we can do is guess". You tell me there's no way of telling when it will arrive and they're guessing. If that's the case then don't state it as a carved in stone fact if you're only guessing. And again...TWO weeks later, it still wasn't there and when I asked again I had another employee saying to me "It doesn't look like anything we'd be getting in". And again, this is NOT the first time I've been told by an employee you'd be getting an item that never arrived. Here's the thing, I personally still enjoy getting out of the house every now and again and actually going shopping like we used to do in the old days as opposed to living my entire life in front of a computer monitor. To that end I try to support brick and mortar whenever possible. That's why I still go to stores instead of shopping online. And if you bothered to read that article I linked to, what's it about? It's about Best Buy struggling to keep customers in their stores because everybody's going online now. And my whole point to this is of course we're going to go online if they start playing "follow the leader" and offering nothing but the same merchandise I can get cheaper elsewhere. My whole point was Best Buy USED TO BE THAT STORE I could go to and find what I was looking for but they traded that uniqueness away to become another clone. My point was Best Buy is creating their own struggle. So...if I'm going to go out of my way to go to a store I expect that if I'm told you're going to have an item in stock on a certain day then you'll have it in stock on that day, barring any understandable delays, but don't tell me you're going to have it when the fact of the matter is you either don't know you're going to have it or most likely won't have it. That's almost a form of bait and switch (which happens to be illegal) when you tell a customer you're going to have an item you know you won't have. Hoping I'll spend money on other stuff while I'm there for the item they lied to me about having? 4. My point was it seems insane that Best Buy wouldn't want the NUMBER ONE SELLER ON AMAZON in their stores while carrying albums that don't even crack the top 100. What do you want to carry in your store, a disc that 10,000 people want or a disc that only 200 people want? Not quite grasping that concept I see. 5. Thank you for proving you didn't even bother to read what I said. I went there to check on something else but asked about the Symphony X disc while I was there because I've been finding THAT BESTBUY.COM IS CLAIMING THE STORES DON'T HAVE STOCK THAT THEY ACTUALLY DO HAVE. I've stood right in Best Buy stores looking at BestBuy.com on my phone saying they don't have an item in stock in the very store I'm standing in while staring at said "not in stock" item on the shelf right in front of me. Numerous times. And it's an issue that needs to be fixed. Several times I've bought items elsewhere because BestBuy.com said the store didn't have it in stock only to find later the store really DID have it. I've pulled my phone out in stores and showed this first hand to Best Buy employees who thought I was crazy when I told them the website was saying they didn't have items in stock that were right there in front of our eyes. I've had Best Buy employees go to the kiosks in the store and punch items in themselves to find BestBuy.com claimed they didn't have it in stock when their inventory system was saying yes they do and they were holding the item in their hand! I've looked at Best Buy employees in the past and told them hey, I just paid more for this someplace else before I came here because the website said you didn't have it. Now I don't know about you, but I know if I worked in a store and a customer told me he PAID MORE for an item than my store was asking for it because my store's website had incorrect information, I'd be bringing it to the attention of management. If one person tells the store this, how many other people spent their money elsewhere and DIDN'T tell the store the incorrect info on their website was costing them business? But months later and Best Buy still acts as though it's some revelation when it's mentioned that their website is on crack. So to that end, the website is useless. Hell, I've even picked items up off the shelves in your brick and mortar stores that the website claimed were ONLINE ONLY items! So to that end I can look at the website and if it says yes, the local store has it in stock then I'm pretty well assured it's in stock. If the website says no it's not in stock then it may or may not be in stock, I have to go to the store to find out for sure. 6. Stop calling your employees liars? And one store? No, it's been at almost every Best Buy store I've ever been to. And when after being shown the model number on my receipt does NOT match the model number on the product I was given a MANAGER stedfastly insists that two different model numbers are actually both the exact same item when even THE MANUFACTURER of the items in question says "no they're not", yes, that's a lie. And for the record I ended up speaking with people at the customer service line above the store level and after seeing all the documentation I had - the exact same documentation I presented to the manager - about the inferior product the manager tried to pass off as the product I was actually supposed to be getting, even they said my documentation was irrefutable and the manager was way out of line. But did Best Buy do anything to make it right? Nope. Just a refund on the original purchase. No attempt whatsoever to get me the CORRECT product I'd already paid for. Oh, and guess what? The inferior product the manager pulled off the shelf and tried to substitute for the more expensive item I was supposed to be getting just so happened to be listed on the website as an "ONLINE ONLY" item! See previous point. Oh, and one more thing you should know about that whole incident, I dealt with TWO other employees before dealing with the manager, so that was a total of THREE employees ignoring documented facts and continuing to lie to my face about substituting an inferior product that retailed for about HALF the price of the superior product I paid for. Yeah, the product they gave me was selling for about $22 on BestBuy.com and was inferior to the $40 model I paid for and expected. If you want me to not call Best Buy employees liars then there's a simple solution. Make sure they don't lie to me. And I never said "all" Best Buy employees were liars so don't put those words in my mouth. That in itself is a form of a lie. By the way, I notice you refer to them as "our employees" as though you are somehow a part of Best Buy. Ummm...I'm able to read the words "FORMER Best Buy Sales Associate" at the bottom of your response. This means 1) As a "sales associate" YOU have no employees, so what's this "our employees" crap? 2) The word FORMER indicates you're no longer a part of Best Buy, yet here you are talking like you're still a part of the company. Now what was that we were talking about Best Buy employees and lies? Old habits die hard it seems. 7. Again, not grasping the true problem here. The problem was NOT that they didn't carry the phone cases I was looking for, the problem was instead of simply saying we don't have it, the employee gave me a BULLS**T excuse as to why they don't have it. I was told the store didn't have it because the LG G3 is an "older model" yet I was seeing a plethora of cases for other models that were just as old or even older. The employee indicated that when the model reaches a certain age Best Buy stops carrying accessories for that model, which was simply not true - another lie - as evidenced by the rich selection of accessories for models that were older than the model I was asking about. You also seem to have missed my point about it being illogical that they would stop carrying accessories for a phone they still feel there is worth in selling. It seems pretty crazy that Best Buy still sees enough worth in the LG G3 to continue stocking it while at the same time saying "This phone has no worth because it's too old so we're not going to carry any accessories for it anymore". 8. You're really going to call me disrespectful when your entire response has been a disrespectful waste of my time? You're a real piece of work! And you're right, I DO have as much of an attitude in person as I do in this post when I'm repeatedly lied to and jerked around instead of just being dealt with honestly as I expect any company I do business with to do. Treat me like I'm stupid and you're right, I will have an attitude. Treat me like an intelligent human being and I won't have an attitude. My attitude is all dependent on the way I'm treated and I've found that Best Buy has had a pretty crappy track record of treating customers with respect. Newsflash: I never said Best Buy was perfect, nor do I expect perfection. What I do expect is HONESTY. You're right, we don't always get what we want as humans, but as a human I have every right to express my anger when I'm dealt with in a LESS THAN HONEST MANNER. And for the record, people like you are the biggest problem. You call being lied to and dealt with dishonestly "small" and "petty"? I don't know about you, but where I come from a person's word is their character. If a person can't keep their word, if a person has to lie to get by then they have no character. By defending a culture in which honesty is not valued you expose your character as well.